Telegraph | US House of Representatives: History, Art & Archives Congress appropriated $30,000 to test the feasibility of creating a telegraph system. Feb. 3, 1843 Congress appropriated $10,000 to Morse in order to lay a telegraph line from Washington, D.C., to Baltimore, MD, Wilmington, DE, Philadelphia, PA, Trenton, NJ, and New York, NY May 1, 1844 The first official telegraph signal—announcing that Henry Clay was nominated by the Whig Party Convention (in Baltimore) as its candidate for President—was sent along the incomplete Washington-Baltimore line from Annapolis Junction to the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. May 24, 1844 Surrounded by an audience of Congressmen, Samuel Morse sent the first official telegraph from the Supreme Court Chamber, then located in the Capitol, to his partner, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore.

He tapped the message, "What hath God wrought!" May 25, 1844 The first news dispatch telegram was sent from the Capitol to Baltimore's Patriot newspaper announcing that the House had just voted against going into the Committee of the Whole to discuss the Oregon Territory. June 27, 1853 President Franklin Pierce approved plans for the new House Chamber, including the first House telegraph office, to be located near the House Post Office. Dec. 14, 1857 A committee appointed to inspect the new House Chamber suggests that telegraph wires be added to the chamber's new press lobby. Dec. 1861 The first official complaints are heard regarding telegraphic censorship. The House Judiciary Committee holds hearings to discuss government censorship of telegraphic news on Civil War battles. Circa. 1880 Public telegraph stations, owned by the Western Union and Baltimore Ohio Companies (the two later merged) are placed in the corridors in front of the main entrance to the House side of the Capitol. Nov. 29, 1883 Underground telegraph and telephone cables were laid to connect the Capitol with White House and other government departments. Feb.

1888 Telegraph stations were moved from their location near the House Floor to an area outside of the press gallery. Office of the Historian: history@mail.house.gov Office of Art & Archives, Office of the Clerk: art@mail.house.gov , archives@mail.house.gov Last telegram ever to be sent July 14 - CBS News CBS News By Chenda Ngak CBS News June 18, 2013, 6:16 PM Last telegram ever to be sent July 14 This undated photo shows the Morse-Vail telegraph register, the first telegraph instrument which was used to receive the message "What Hath God Wrought" on the experimental line between Washington, DC and Baltimore, Md., on May 24, 1844. One hundred fifty years ago, as the nation was being ripped apart by Civil War, it was being knitted together electronically by what was arguably the world's first high-tech gadget, the humble telegraph. On Oct. 24, 1861, with just the push of a button Stephen J.

Field would send a message from a telegraph office in San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, telling him the first transcontinental telegraph line was up and running. (AP Photo) Timeline - Life and Inventions of Samuel Morse Sketch by Samuel Morse. Self Portrait by Samuel Morse Updated August 10, 2016. 1791 On April 27, Samuel Finley Breese Morse is born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, the first child of Jedidiah Morse, a Congregational minister and geographer, and Elizabeth Ann Finley Breese. 1799 Morse enters Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. 1800 Alessandro Volta of Italy creates the "voltaic pile," a battery that produces a reliable, steady current of electricity. 1805 Samuel Morse enters Yale College at age fourteen. He hears lectures on electricity from Benjamin Silliman and Jeremiah Day. While at Yale, he earns money by painting small portraits of friends, classmates, and teachers. A profile goes for one dollar; and a miniature portrait on ivory sells for five dollars. 1810 Samuel Morse graduates from Yale College and returns to Charlestown, Massachusetts.

continue reading below our video Profile of Samuel Morse Despite his wishes to be a painter and encouragement from the famed American painter Washington Allston, Morse's parents plan for him to be a bookseller's apprentice. He becomes a clerk for Daniel Mallory, his father's Boston book publisher. 1811 In July, Morse's parents relent and let him set sail for England with Washington Allston. He attends the Royal Academy of Arts in London and receives instruction from the famed Pennsylvania-born painter Benjamin West. In December, Morse rooms with Charles Leslie of Philadelphia, who is also studying painting. They become friends with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. While in England, Morse also befriends the American painter Charles Bird King, the American actor John Howard Payne, and the English painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. 1812 Samuel Morse models a plaster statuette of The Dying Hercules, which wins a gold medal at the Adelphi Society of Arts exhibition in London. His subsequent 6' x 8' painting of The Dying Hercules is exhibited at the Royal Academy and receives critical acclaim. 1815 In October, Samuel Morse returns to the United States and Morse opens an art studio in Boston.

1816 In search of portrait commissions to support himself, Morse travels to New Hampshire. In Concord, he meets Lucretia Pickering Walker, aged sixteen, and they are soon engaged to be married. 1817 While in Charlestown, Samuel Morse and his brother Sidney patent a flexible-piston man-powered water pump for fire engines. They demonstrate it successfully, but it is a commercial failure. Morse spends the rest of the year painting in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 1818 On September 29, Lucretia Pickering Walker and Morse are married in Concord, New Hampshire. Morse spends the winter in Charleston, South Carolina, where he receives many portrait commissions. This is the first of four annual trips to Charleston. 1819 On September 2, Morse's first child, Susan Walker Morse, is born. The city of Charleston commissions Morse to paint a portrait of President James Monroe. 1820 The Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted discovers that electric current in a wire generates a magnetic field that can deflect a compass needle. This property will eventually be used in the design of some electromagnetic telegraph systems.

1821 While living with his family in New Haven, Morse paints such distinguished individuals as Eli Whitney, Yale president Jeremiah Day, and his neighbor Noah Webster . He also paints in Charleston and Washington, D.C. 1822 Samuel Morse invents a marble-cutting machine that can carve three dimensional sculpture in marble or stone. He discovers that it is not patentable because it infringes on an 1820 design by Thomas Blanchard . Morse finishes an eighteen-month project to paint The House of Representatives, an oversize scene of the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. It contains more than eighty portraits of members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court, but loses money during its public exhibition. 1823 On March 17, a second child, Charles Walker Morse, is born. Morse opens an art studio in New York City. 1825 The Marquis de Lafayette makes his last visit to the United States. The City of New York commissions Morse to paint a portrait of Lafayette for $1,000. On January 7, a third child, James Edward Finley Morse, is born.

On February 7, Morse's wife, Lucretia, dies suddenly at age twenty-five. By the time he is notified and returns home to New Haven, she has already been buried. In November, artists in New York City form a drawing cooperative, the New York Drawing Association, and elect Morse president. It is run by and for artists, and its goals include art instruction. William Sturgeon invents the electromagnet , which will be a key component of the telegraph. 1826 January in New York, Samuel Morse becomes a founder and first president of the National Academy of Design, which has been established in reaction to the conservative American Academy of Fine Arts. Morse is president on and off for nineteen years. On June 9, his father, Jedidiah Morse, dies. 1827 Morse helps launch the New York Journal of Commerce and publishes Academics of Art. Professor James Freeman Dana of Columbia College gives a series of lectures on electricity and electromagnetism at the New York Athenaeum, where Morse also lectures. Through their friendship, Morse becomes more familiar with the properties of electricity . Prev WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT! WHAT HATH GOD WROUGHT!

Can you send out lightnings, that they may go, And say to you, "Here we are!"? (Job 38:35). Their line is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19:4). What hath God wrought! is from the Book of Numbers–the 4th book of the Old Covenant: Surely there is no enchantment (sorcery) against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel: according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought! (Numbers 23:23). Here is the dictionary definition of the word WROUGHT: A past tense and a past participle of work. adjective 1. Put together; created: a carefully wrought plan. 2. Shaped by hammering with tools. Used chiefly of metals or metalwork. 3. Made delicately or elaborately. This short phrase from the Book of Numbers were the first words transmitted by the newly invented marvel of the electric telegraph. Telegraph comes from the Greek tele (far) and grapho (write) and was first used by French inventor Claude Chappe to mean FAR WRITER.

In 1844, time and distance were annihilated by the electric telegraph–the marvelous invention of Professor Samuel Morse. This miraculous invention later led to the telephone, radio, TV . . . and eventually the Internet! Artist's portrayal of Morse sending the first telegraph message. On May 24, 1844, Professor Samuel Morse sent the first message via electricity from Washington City to Baltimore. It comprised the short Biblical phrase: What Hath God Wrought! Samuel F. B. Morse (1791–1872). This was the most revolutionary invention since the printing press and the dawn of the telecommunications era. Professor Morse sent the first telegraph message from the Supreme Court Room of the Capitol at Washington City. Annie Ellsworth, left, suggested the first message: What Hath God Wrought! Professor Morse knew that Annie Ellsworth was divinely inspired to choose that phrase because he knew that all the glory belonged to Almighty God for the world changing discovery of writing remotely by using lightning or electricity. Before electric telegraphy, most messages that traveled long distances were entrusted to messengers who memorized them or carried them in writing. These messages could be delivered no faster than the fastest horse.

Professor Morse first envisioned the electric telegraph in 1832 In 1832, Samuel Morse–the American Leonardo da Vinci– was returning to the U.S. from a trip to Europe. Morse was a very talented PAINTER and went abroad to study sculpture and painting in Great Britain, France, and Italy. On the return voyage aboard the packet ship Sully, the conversation turned to the new discovered wonders of electro-magnetism: In the early part of the voyage conversation at the dinner table turned upon recent discoveries in electro-magnetism, and the experiments of Ampère with the electro-magnet. Dr. Jackson spoke of the length of wire in the coil of a magnet, and the question was asked by some one of the company, "If the velocity of electricity was retarded by the length of the wire?" Dr. Jackson replied that electricity passes instantaneously over any known length of wire. He referred to experiments made by Dr. Franklin with several miles of wire in circuit, to ascertain the velocity of electricity; the result being that he could observe no difference of time between the touch at one extremity and the spark at the other. At this point Mr.

Morse interposed the remark, "If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity." The conversation went on. But the one new idea had taken complete possession of the mind of Mr. Morse. It was as sudden and pervading as if he had received at that moment an electric shock. All that he had learned in former years, the experiments he had seen in his boyhood, his studies with Professors Day and Silliman, the later and significant discourses of Professor Dana, and conversations with Professor Renwick, were revived, and began to form themselves into means and ways to the accomplishment of a grand result. He withdrew from the table and went upon deck. He was in mid-ocean, undique caedum, undique pontus. As the lightning cometh out of the east and shineth unto the west, so swift and far was the instrument to fork that was taking shape in his creative mind. (Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse , pp. 251-252).

Immediately after the ship's arrival in New York, Morse was eager to make his vision of the electric telegraph a practical reality: Upon the Sully's arrival in New York in the autumn of 1832, Morse disembarked eager to begin work upon the telegraph; but the necessity of supporting himself and his children left little time for experiment and still less money for engaging in the construction of instruments. Furthermore, since there were no manufacturers of electrical appliances, the work had to be slowly and laboriously done by hand. In 1835 Morse had the good fortune to secure an appointment as professor of the Literature of the Arts of Design in the new University of the City of New York, and took up his lodgings in the University building on Washington Square. Utilizing these quarters, not only as a studio and living apartment, but also as a workshop, he succeeded before the close of 1836 in completing his first, crude telegraph apparatus, and in devising a numerical code to represent the letters of the alphabet. (Thompson, Wiring a Continent, pp. 8-9).

For the next 5 years, working almost alone, and with very limited funds, Samuel Morse developed a rudimentary telegraph and then solved the greatest problem of all: transmission of electricity over long distances. A battery that supplied a steady source of electric current had just been invented by Italian inventor Alessandro Volta. Volta's battery produced DIRECT CURRENT which is notoriously weak over long distances. 1837 Morse telegraph. 3. A relay to amplify the voltage over long distances. Morse relay. DC current loses a lot of its potential over long distances. Morse's relay reinforced this voltage with fresh batteries at each station. Morse register used in the Baltmore-Washington trials. Working practically alone, Samuel Morse made great improvements to his telegraph between 1837 and 1844. Message sending key. The ingenuity of Morse's invention was its SIMPLICITY....As writing should contain no unnecessary words so a mechanical device should contain no unnecessary parts....The telegraph answered to that description and was sublime in its simplicity of operation. Morse offered to sell his telegraph patent to the U.S.

government for $100,000 After the successful test in 1844, Morse offered to sell his patent to the U.S. government for the measly sum of $100,000. That is equivalent to about $500,000 in today's paper "money." Morse saw the telegraph as a natural adjunct to the Post Office. President Polk was very enthusiastic about the telegraph but was powerless to act without the approval of Congress. President Polk (1795–1849). Postmaster General from '45 to '49. Johnson refused to authorize the purchase of the patent for the paltry sum of $100,000. Congress had to vote on any measure to appropriate funds for the telegraph, and with the opposition of Johnson, the government sponsored telegraph was doomed: The Telegraph, no longer an experiment, was an accomplished fact. Speaking for itself, it required no champions on the floor of Congress, or in the public press. The extension of the line from Baltimore to Philadelphia and New York, and to all the cities of the land, was only a work of time. But the aid of Congress was sought in vain.

An appropriation of $8,000 was made to support the line between the capital and Baltimore, while in its infancy, but further than that the Government declined to go. The sum named as the price for which the Morse Company would sell the Telegraph to the Government, was $100,000. The subject was discussed in the report of Hon. Cave Johnson, the Postmaster General, under President Polk. He was a member of Congress when the bill was before the House appropriating $30,000 for the experimental line, and was one of those who ridiculed the whole subject as unworthy the notice of sensible men. As Postmaster-General he said in his report, after the experiment had succeeded to the admiration of mankind: "That the operation of the Telegraph between Washington and Baltimore had not satisfied him that, under any rate of postage that could be adopted, its revenues could be made equal to its expenditures." (Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse , pp. 510-511). With government support withdrawn, the telegraph was left entirely in the hands of private enterprise.

After years of fierce competition, a company named Western Union emerged as the leading telegraph company in the U.S. Morse aroused the hatred of Rome for his anti-Papal writings!! With the success of the telegraph, Morse should have been a very wealthy man and able to return to his first love—painting....That was not to be however because Morse had aroused the hatred of the Roman hierarchy for his anti-Papal writings. That was the real reason for the rejection of his miraculous invention!! In 1830, during his European trip, while watching a procession of the host in Rome, he failed to take off his hat as a sign of respect to "Jesus" carried in the monstrance. According to the dogma of transubstantiation, the host is miraculously transformed into the body and blood of Christ and must be rendered divine honors. Morse failed to do this . . .

and therefore lost his hat: Later, on this same day, while watching a part of the ceremonies on the Corso, he has this rather disagreeable experience: - "I was standing close to the side of the house when, in an instant, without the slightest notice, my hat was struck off to the distance of several yards by a soldier, or rather a poltroon in a soldier's costume, and this courteous maneuver was performed with his gun and bayonet, accompanied with curses and taunts and the expression of a demon in his countenance. "In cases like this there is no redress. The soldier receives his orders to see that all hats are off in this religion of force, and the manner is left to his discretion. If he is a brute, as was the case in this instance, he may strike it off; or, as in some other instances, if the soldier be a gentleman, he may ask to have it taken off. There was no excuse for this outrage on all decency, to which every foreigner is liable and which is not of infrequent occurrence.

The blame lies after all, not so much with the pitiful wretch who perpetrates this outrage, as it does with those who gave him such base and indiscriminate orders." (Edward Lind Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Life & Journals, vol. I, p. 353). After this experience at Rome, his eyes were really opened to the true nature of the Latin Church. When he arrived home, the Latin hierarchy was very active in subverting the nation through immigration and seeking taxpayer money for their parochial schools. As a Christian and a patriot, Morse decided to join the fight to save the public schools . . . and the nation! In 1835, Morse published 2 small books which won him the undying hatred of the Roman hierarchy: 1. Queen Victoria (1819–1901). Queen from 1837 to 1901.

On August 16, the first message sent across the cable was, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth, peace and good will toward men." Then Queen Victoria sent a telegram of congratulation to President James Buchanan through the line, and expressed a hope that it would prove an additional link between the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and reciprocal esteem: THE QUEEN'S MESSAGE To the President of the United States, Washington:- The Queen desires to congratulate the President upon the successful completion of this great international work, in which the Queen has taken the deepest interest. The Queen is convinced that the President will join with her fervently hoping that the electric cable which now connects Great Britain with the United States will prove an additional link between the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem. The Queen has much pleasure in thus communicating with the President, and renewing to him her wishes for the prosperity of the United States. President Buchanan responded that it was a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by conqueror on the field of battle: THE PRESIDENT'S REPLY Washington City, August 16, 1858.

To Her Majesty Victoria, The Queen of Great Britain:- The President cordially reciprocates the congratulations of her Majesty the Queen, on the success of the great international enterprise accomplished by the science, skill and indomitable energy of the two countries. It is a triumph more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than ever was won by conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the blessing of Heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine Providence to diffuse religion, civilization, liberty and law throughout the world. In this view, will not all nations of Christendom spontaneously unite in the declaration that it shall be forever neutral, and that its communications shall be held sacred in passing to their place of destination, even in the midst of hostilities. National hysteria broke out in the United States and England at the completion of the laying of the cable: The celebrations that followed bordered on hysteria. There were hundred gun salutes in Boston and New York: flags flew from public buildings, church bells rang. There were fireworks, parades, and special church services.

Torch-bearing revelers in New York got so carried away that City Hall was accidentally set on fire and narrowly escaped destruction. (Standage, The Victorian Internet , p. 81). Unfortunately the transatlantic line broke after 3 weeks, and this interruption in communications almost led to a war between Great Britain and the U.S. over the Trent Affair. The first transatlantic cable was sabotaged!! Satan was desperate to prevent the laying of the transatlantic cable. Of course, most people don't even believe in the existence of the devil . . . and he likes it like that! The euphoria over the laying of the first cable was short lived because the cable went dead after a month. During the first attempt to lay the cable in 1857, someone among the crew members sabotaged the cable and it ended up on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. On the second attempt in May 1857, a furious storm (unprecedented in the North Atlantic at that time of year) arose and almost sent the cable . . . and the 2 ships . . . to the bottom of the ocean: A week of this seemed all that any ship could take.

But on Monday, the twenty-first, when it seemed the sea had done its worst and must by now have spent its strength, the most violent storm in memory raged across the North Atlantic. Wind howled in the rigging, tearing at the battered canvas; the ship pitched and shuddered, rising on giant waves to drop sickeningly into the troughs. A spar snapped in the bow; another dropped from overhead, bringing down everything attached to it. The starboard wing of the gallant American eagle figurehead was swept off to sea. Worst of all, the Agamemnon had disappeared in that churning mass of wind and rain and fury. In the crew's opinion the ship had foundered. (Carter, Cyrus Field: Man of Two World, p.150). Satan can and does raise up hellish storms to foil God's purposes.....The Evil One raised up a furious storm to drown Joshua and His disciples on the Sea of Galilee (Matthew 8:24). When St. Paul was on his way to establish the Congregation at Rome, a furious storm arose which lasted for 14 days. (Acts 27:14). Route of the cable from Newfoundland to Ireland.

The cable came ashore at Co. Kerry, Ireland. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) put Edward Whitehouse in charge of sending and receiving to Newfoundland and London. Co. Kerry, Ireland. On previous cable laying voyages, Whitehouse had excused himself by claiming "sickness." He waited in Ireland until the cable came ashore and then commenced his work of sabotage. William Thomson (1816–1819). With the telegraph, the Trent Affair would have been resolved peaceably. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) supervised the connection of the cable after the landing in Ireland. He then went home to visit his wife in Scotland and left Edward Whitehouse in charge: After Thomson landed at Valentia, he went home to see his wife. He left cable refinements up to Whitehouse, who wanted no help. Toward the latter part of August, Thomson began receiving messages from Bright about transmission problems. He hurried back to Knightstown and discovered that Whitehouse had replaced his sensitive instruments with enormous induction coils five feet long and electrified with 500 cells that emitted up to 2,000 volts.

Whitehouse had also inserted his own relay and Morse's electromagnetic recording instrument because he never understood Thomson's instruments well enough to use them. By the time Thomson restored his own instruments to the cable, Whitehouse's powerhouse had burned so many faults into the conductor that Thomson's devices would no longer work on lower voltages. To send a signal, Thomson had no recourse but to boost the voltage, and this continued to degrade the conductor by burning the insulation. (Hearn, Circuits in the Sea, pp. 132-133). By running high voltage through the cable, Whitehouse ruined the greatest feat of engineering ever attempted by mankind. Another link was not established until after the Civil War. President Lincoln used the telegraph to save the Union!! God's great gift of this new technology came just in time to save the Union....President Lincoln used the telegraph to reach out to his generals in the field and the vast Union armies communicated frequently by telegraph. President Lincoln used the telegraph to win the Civil War. Until now, very little is known about President Lincoln's use of this revolutionary new technology. Except for the White House, the President spent most of his time in the telegraph office.

Major Thomas Eckert was head of the Military Telegraph Corps. Major Thomas T. Eckert (1825-1910). A special branch of the army was organized called the Military Telegraph Corps with major Thomas T. Eckert commanding in Washington City. Military Telegraph Corps. Thousands of miles of telegraph lines were laid by the Military Telegraph Corps thus enabling the Union army to conduct far flung campaigns over the vast rebel held territory. Military Telegraph Corps laying telegraph lines. Here is a quote from a book by David Homer Bates, manager of the war department telegraph office: Abraham Lincoln has been studied from almost every point of view, but it is a notable fact that none of his biographers has ever seriously considered that branch of the Government service with which Lincoln was in daily personal touch for four years—the military telegraph; for during the Civil War the President spent more of his waking hours in the War Department telegraph office than in any other place, except the White House. While in the telegraph office he was comparatively free from official cares, and therefore more apt to disclose his natural traits and dispositions than elsewhere under other conditions. (Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, p. 3).

Unlike many of his subordinates, Lincoln was quick to grasp the new technology of the telegraph. His top priority was a telegraph linking the 2 greatest nations on earth. Lincoln was anxious to establish communications with the Czar of Russia!! President Lincoln was most anxious to establish a close diplomatic relationship with the great Czar of Russia–Alexander II....In 1861, the Czar sent his fleet to New York and San Francisco and thereby forestalled British military help to the Confederacy. In his Annual Message to Congress, December, 1863, Lincoln, after referring to the arrangements with the Czar of Russia for the construction of a line of telegraph from our Pacific coast through the empire of Russia to connect with European systems, urged upon Congress favorable consideration of the subject of an international telegraph (cable) across the Atlantic and a cable connection between Washington and our forts and ports along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico. In the latter scheme he took a deep personal interest, and he had a number of conferences with Cyrus W. Field, the chief exponent of ocean cables. (Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, p. 257).

By 1861, the telegraph line had reached the Pacific Ocean and Western Union was given the mammoth task of extending it to Russian Alaska. Czar Alexander II (1818–1881). Czar of Russia from 1855 to 1881. Czar Alexander II helped save the Union by threatening intervention if Great Britain or France joined the CONfederates. Russia was the ONLY friend the U.S. had during the Civil War. President Lincoln was most anxious to extend the telegraph line to the great Czar of Russia. Russian navy ship Osliaba in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1863. On July 1, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln granted Western Union the right of way from San Francisco to the British Columbia border. Wiring the world through Russia. The proposed route was from San Francisco to New Westminster, BC, and then across Russian Alaska to the Bering Strait and then across Siberia to Moscow. Route of the proposed cable between Washington and Moscow. President's Lincoln's assassination ended the Russian-American telegraph line and the noble enterprise of linking the 2 greatest nations on earth!

The excuse for ending the project was that the transatlantic cable made the Russian cable obsolete. There was no direct communication link between Washington and Moscow until 1963. Direct communication between the 2 greatest nations on earth would have prevented WWI, the Bolshevik Revolution, WWII, the Cold War etc., etc. The Russian-American telegraph line was also sabotaged!! It is almost beyond belief but the Russian-American telegraph line was also sabotaged. By 1861, the telegraph line had reached the Pacific Ocean and Western Union was given the mammoth task of extending it to Russian Alaska. William H. Seward 150 years ago, the telegraph united the nation 150 years ago, the telegraph united the nation Add a message (optional) Success - Article sent! close This Morse-Vail telegraph register was used to receive the message "What Hath God Wrought" on the experimental line between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore, Md., on May 24, 1844. Associated Press This circa 1863 photo shows a repairman working on a telegraph line in the United States.

Library of Congress In this 1942 file photo, delivery clerk Joe Martinez gives messages for delivery by Isaac Anzaroot, Shirley Braisted, Mary Leggiaordro and Sheila Burns at Postal Telegraph-Cable Co.'s Radio City office in New York. Associated Press This circa 1900 photo shows a group of Western Union Messengers in Norfolk, Va. the U.S. Library of Congress In this March 22, 1940 file photo, Thomas Midgley Jr., right, chairman of the Board of American Chemical Society, demonstrates the original morse telegraph machine to Conway P. Coe, U.S. commissioner of Patents, in Washington, D.C. P Photo) Associated Press This circa 1917 file photo shows cable telegraphers at the New York offices of The Associated Press. Associated Press Associated Press LOS ANGELES -- Long before there was an Internet or an iPad, before people were social networking and instant messaging, Americans had already gotten wired. Today marks the 150th anniversary of the completion of the transcontinental telegraph. From sea to sea, it electronically knitted together a nation that was simultaneously tearing itself apart, North and South, in the Civil War.

Americans soon saw that a breakthrough in the spread of technology could enhance national identity and, just as today, that it could vastly change lives. "It was huge," says Amy Fischer, archivist for Western Union, which strung the line across mountains, canyons and tribal lands to make the final connection. "With the Civil War just a few months old, the idea that California, the growing cities of California, could talk to Washington and the East Coast in real time was huge. It's hard to overstate the impact of that." On Oct. 24, 1861, with the push of a button, California's chief justice, Stephen J. Field, wired a message from San Francisco to President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, congratulating him on the transcontinental telegraph's completion that day. He added the wish that it would be a "means of strengthening the attachment which binds both the East and the West to the Union." A rudimentary version of the Internet -- not much more advanced than two tin cans and a string -- had been born. But it worked, and it grew.

Just a few years after the nation was wired, telegraph technology would be extended to the rest of North America, and soon cylindrical wires from Mexico to Canada would jangle with little bursts of electromagnetic juice, sending messages of every kind and redefining how communication can mean business. As the United States rebuilt itself following the devastating Civil War, it did so in no small part with money wired from Washington. In 1869, when the final piece of track connecting the transcontinental railroad was laid in Promontory, Utah, a young news organization called The Associated Press sent a story about it out on the wire. "I really see the telegraph as the original technology, the grandfather of all these other technologies that came out of it: the telephone, the teletype, the fax, the Internet," said telegraph historian Thomas Jepsen, author of "My Sisters Telegraphic: Women In Telegraph Office 1846-1950." In its time, the telegraph was in some ways an even greater influence on the way people communicate than the Internet is today. "The transcontinental telegraph put the Pony Express out of business in the literal click of a telegrapher's key.

That's not an exaggeration," says Christopher Corbett, author of "Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express." Indeed, the Pony Express, which boasted it could deliver a letter from Sacramento to St. Joseph, Mo., in the unheard of time of 10 days when it began operations on April 3, 1860, shut down 19 months later -- on the same day the transcontinental telegraph went live. Though dramatic, that was a short-term effect. "But the longer-term effect was we connected the nation in real time. ...," says Fischer. "For the first time, businesses could do business nationally. The government could communicate nationally in almost real time." Just as the iPad, the iPod and the personal computer had a visionary genius behind them in Steve Jobs, the telegraph had one in Samuel F.B. Morse. A painter and part-time inventor who twice ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York, Morse was in his early 40s in 1831 when he came up with the idea for the telegraph. He said in his papers at the Library of Congress that it was inspired by a discussion about electromagnetics with a fellow passenger on an ocean liner.

By the mid-1830s he'd developed Morse Code, the series of dots and dashes that telegraph key operators would tap out on their little contraptions. The result would flash across the country, and later around the world, where it would be translated back into words on the other end. Morse obtained a patent for his telegraph in 1840, and four years later he sent his famous first message -- "What hath God wrought?" -- over a line he'd strung from Washington to Baltimore with $30,000 in federal money. The technology took off. In 1845, more than a century before the TV show "America's Most Wanted," a man named John Tawell was arrested in England for the murder of his mistress after police received a telegraphed tip, telling them where he was. A year later, the AP was formed and began relaying news of the Mexican-American War through a combination of telegraph wires and horseback riders, which demonstrated a limitation in the new technology. "The early days of the telegraph were a lot like the early days of the Internet," says Fischer.

"There were a lot of little one-off companies that would connect one or maybe two cities, but no big networks." Thus the need for the guys on horseback, to get the information to the next telegraph station. By 1860, the telegraph was a lot like an early cellphone system. Only instead of losing the connection when you stepped behind a big building, you lost it if you traveled west of Omaha, Neb. From the West coast, a message could be sent only as far east as Nevada. The Pacific Telegraph Act would change that, becoming one of the first instances of the federal government setting telecommunications policy. Passed in 1860, it called for the government to hire a company that would extend the line across Nebraska, through Utah and Nevada, linking the West with the rest of the country. With subsidiaries of Western Union building the system from both directions, they would meet in Salt Lake City. To get there, the construction crews had to reassure wary Indian tribes whose land they were trespassing on. They did so by giving some gifts and by hiring others to build the thing.

They needed lumber, especially in the treeless desert terrain of Nevada, and it took more than 200 oxen more than a month to haul it across the Sierra Nevada, according to an account by James Gamble, who was in charge on the western end of the project. Once they got the lumber in place, work crews hired guards, sometimes Indians, specifically to keep it from being stolen, just as at modern construction sites. There were homesteaders heading West, needing materials to build houses. Along the eastern flank, there was a different problem, Jepsen noted. Crews initially fashioned some of the telegraph poles so small that buffalo, using them as scratching posts, knocked them over. Despite the obstacles, the line was completed in a matter of months. "It's a very American story," said Corbett, adding that not only was the project brought in with amazing speed but that it "completely changed everything in a flash," from the introduction of groundbreaking technology to the country's own self-image. "California was almost like a satellite, if you think about it," he said. "It was almost 2,000 miles between the Missouri River and the California slope.

But something like the telegraph made it seem closer." Completing the project so quickly also infused the country with a kind of can-do spirit that he and other historians say it may not have had in quite as much abundance when the project was initiated. Telegraphers, hired by the thousands to relay every kind of information, created a new language, one of strange abbreviations that only they, and perhaps some wire service journalists, understood. Seventy-three, for example, meant goodbye; 30 was the number placed at the end of a news story to signify the end. "It had a Twitter-like feel to it," said historian Bill Deverell, director of the USC-Huntington Institute on California and the West. But unlike terms like LOL and BTW that cellphone users created to save wear and tear on their thumbs, and later adapted to Twitter to stay under its 140-character count, telegraph abbreviations were done to keep from jamming up and slowing down the wire with needless words. "Time was money," Deverell noted.

These days, telegrapher talk and even Morse Code, once used to keep track of ships at sea and prevent trains that shared main lines from running into each other, have been all but abandoned, made obsolete by the technological revolution the telegraph created. The telephone was invented in 1876. In time, cellphones and personal computers came along, and in 2006, Western Union, the company that had made a name for itself by charging sweethearts to wire singing telegrams and chocolates to one another, stopped sending telegrams all together. (Wiring money remains a main business for the Denver-based company.) Historian Jepsen sees value in reflecting on a milestone for Morse's invention. "It really gives one a good understanding of how we got where we are and how the Internet evolved," he said. "The telegraph is really where it all started." Library Exhibits :: Telegraph Telegraph Telegraph On May 24, 1844, the question, "What hath God Wrought?" traveled electronically across sets of wires from Baltimore, MD to Washington D.C. by what was to become one of the most important inventions within the realms of modern communication: the telegraph.

The word "telegraphy" itself comes from the Greek words tele and graphien and literally translates as "far-write." In a world where written letters could take days to reach their destination, the speed of this new form of communication was truly a modern marvel. The history of the telegraph is one of many origins, although Americans almost always refer to Morse as the "father inventor'. However, it is important to note that Joseph Henry, a college professor in NY State, worked on telegraphy a few years before Morse. Henry solved the obstacle of electrical currents fading as they traveled down a longer line of wire by, “using relays and batteries at regular intervals,” along the wire itself. (Dulken 192) Henry was then finally able to send a signal across a wire that measured a mile in 1831.

Morse followed up on Henry’s work, well aware that his final product was more of an innovation then a pure invention and was known to have said that, “the chief merit [of discovery] is that of so combining together things and inventions already existing, as to produce a result never before attained.” (Dulken 192) Soon enough, telegraph lines were being spread across the country and by 1861 a telegraphic line reached from the east coast all the way to the state of California inevitably putting the short-lived Pony Express out of business. Even more stunning was the first successful trans-Atlantic submarine cable that joined America with England in 1866. Americans like Lane witnessed their country shrink in size as telegraphy became a part of everyday life. Below are several incidents and mentions of this modern device and how telegraphy was utilized in the incidents of Lane's life: Lane writes about events in October of 1852: From New York, on Monday, I went to Chicopee, Massachusetts, to visit my mother, sister Betsey Maria, and brothers Lorenzo – Julius M. and Comfort V. – the latter then residing in Boston, having been informed by telegraph of my arrival.

(Lane 237) Lane writes about a "misunderstanding" between himself and a Banker: Arriving at home on Saturday evening as before narrated, about the next Tuesday I was startled at the receipt of a telegram from brother C.V. in Boston, saying, “Draft protested – Warriner wants money refunded – telegraph him at once!” Though feeling a little shakey myself, but surmising the cause of the hitch, I immediately telegraphed both C.V. and the Cashier that it would probably be all right, in a day or two – and sure enough Mr Warriner telegraphed me the next day that the draft had been paid. The facts were, that it had been presented for payment before the Steamer, bearing the advices of the Bank upon which it had been drawn, had arrived, and had, in accordance with commercial and financial usage, been protested. But the scare, all around, was none the less genuine. On getting the notice of protest, Mr Warriner, supposing that he had been taken in by a Western Sharper, not only telegraphed C.V.

that he should hold him responsible, but also hustled himself up to Chicopee to complain to my brothers there – Lorenzo and Julius M – of the shabby manner in which he had been treated by that scalawag Western brother of theirs. On getting advices of the payment of the draft, however, he made all proper apologies, and afterwards, when I called upon him, we had a hearty laugh together over the affair. (Lane 239-240) Lane writes about experience with starting a Newspaper: … to start a Daily paper, providing we could be guaranteed from loss the first year, by a sufficient amount of pledged advertising from the business men of the city. This Mr Canfield was to undertake to work up, but, when it came to the point, the task was devolved upon me. The estimated amount required was $3,500, and on making the canvass I secured pledges, at the rates which we had made, for $4,500.

I was also detailed to go to Cleveland to make arrangements for special Daily Telegrams, from the Associated Press dispatches after their appearance in the Cleveland papers – those papers, being members of the Association, refusing their con sent to our getting to our getting them first handed. After many hindrances, a satisfactory arrangement was closed with the Superintendent and chief operator of the Western Union, at Cleveland, which gave the Daily Telegraphic news in a condenced form, several hours sooner then the people of Akron could get it through the Cleveland papers. (Lane 272-273) Lane recounts the time he received a telegraph requesting his service as Akron's probate judge: Voluntary Honors from Governor Dennison. A few items, intimately connected with my life-history thus far, not readily woven into the main warp and woof of the preceding narative, may properly be mentioned here: In July, 1861, after I had been connected with the Beacon about six months, the death of William M. Dodge, the Probate Judge of Summit County, created a vacancy in that office, to be filled, by appointment from the Governor, until the ensuing October Election.

Governor Dennison, reading the news of Judge Dodge’s death in the papers, said to my friend Coggshall, then State Librarian, and Acting Military Secretary to the Governor, that he desired to fill the vacancy before the scramble for the place commenced, and asked him if he thought I would take it? Coggshall said he thought I would. The Governor immediately turned to his Private Secretary and said: “Make out a commission for Samuel A Lane, as Probate Judge for Summit “County, in place of William M. Dodge, deceased”. Coggshall then sent me the following telegram “Columbus, July 24th, 1861 “To S. A. Lane Esq. Akron, Ohio. “Governor Dennison has appointed you as Probate Judge, in place of Dodge, “deceased. Commission goes up by mail W. T. Coggshall”. My predecessor in the Editorial Chain of the Beacon, having professedly, and apparently, reformed his intemperate habits, had just started for Columbus, via Cleveland, with a respectable petition, asking for his appointment to the vacancy in question.

Being in the Telegraph office in Hudson, when the message to me came over the wires, the operator informed Mr. Lewis of its import, who immediately telegraphed to me, as follows: “Hudson July 24th 1861

Question: "What hath God wrought" was sent from Washington D.C. to Baltimore, MD on May 24, 1844, the first message sent by what new technology?
Answer: The electrical telegraph